Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.

Believe it or not—if you are a loyal Curio reader, you probably believe it—scientists have spent quite a bit of time investigating the physics of fairy tales. Take Rapunzel, the maiden in the tower who let her hair down so the prince could climb up. Numerous physicists have attempted to calculate the feasibility of such a feat. The tensile strength of human hair is so strong, at around 380 Megapascals, that Rapunzel's full head of hair could theoretically support a prince exerting 2750 kg (6000 lbs) of force. Even if her prince weighed 500 pounds the silky locks would easily hold. However, depending on which physicist you believe, her hair would come out of her scalp, she would be pulled out the window, or her skull would detach from her neck (let's hope not the latter). All of these fates could be avoided, however, if Rapunzel tied her hair in a knot around a bedpost or doorknob before lowering it down. The friction of the hairy knot would easily hold as the anchor point for the ascending prince. Maybe the Brothers Grimm just omitted that detail? A less resolvable issue is the length of Rapunzel's hair. Human hair grows between four and six inches per year, so even if the tower was only two stories tall, Rapunzel was lying about her age!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.

Believe it or not—if you are a loyal Curio reader, you probably believe it—scientists have spent quite a bit of time investigating the physics of fairy tales. Take Rapunzel, the maiden in the tower who let her hair down so the prince could climb up. Numerous physicists have attempted to calculate the feasibility of such a feat. The tensile strength of human hair is so strong, at around 380 Megapascals, that Rapunzel's full head of hair could theoretically support a prince exerting 2750 kg (6000 lbs) of force. Even if her prince weighed 500 pounds the silky locks would easily hold. However, depending on which physicist you believe, her hair would come out of her scalp, she would be pulled out the window, or her skull would detach from her neck (let's hope not the latter). All of these fates could be avoided, however, if Rapunzel tied her hair in a knot around a bedpost or doorknob before lowering it down. The friction of the hairy knot would easily hold as the anchor point for the ascending prince. Maybe the Brothers Grimm just omitted that detail? A less resolvable issue is the length of Rapunzel's hair. Human hair grows between four and six inches per year, so even if the tower was only two stories tall, Rapunzel was lying about her age!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Shall I compare thee to a winter's day? For baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi, who was born 340 years ago, art and poetry both played their part in inspiring The Four Seasons violin concertos (small orchestral works with soloists). Marco Ricci's landscape paintings provided Vivaldi with a view of weather and mood changes in the seasons. For each of his four concertos, Vivaldi wrote a sonnet poem to detail each scene described by the music: in the first movement of the Winter concerto, the punctuation of notes in the strings fall "shivering, frozen… [like] snow in biting, stinging winds." The constant pounding rhythm—contrasted with the furious swirls in the solo violin—paint an early image of program music (a piece that describes a scene), long before it was cool to do so in classical music. Though Vivaldi wrote over 500 concertos, this one remains a favorite, even if it does make us want to curl up next to a fire with a cup of hot chocolate!

Below: a translated version of the Winter poem. Vivaldi's Four Seasons are sometimes performed with readings of the sonnets before each concerto.

Winter

[I: Allegro non molto]

To tremble from cold in the icy snow,
in the harsh breath of a horrid wind;
to run, stamping one’s feet every moment,
our teeth chattering in the extreme cold.

[II: Largo]

Before the fire to pass peaceful,
Contented days while the rain outside pours down.

[III: Allegro]

We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously,
for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and,
rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home
despite the locked and bolted doors …
this is winter, which nonetheless
brings its own delights.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Shall I compare thee to a winter's day? For baroque composer Antonio Vivaldi, who was born 340 years ago, art and poetry both played their part in inspiring The Four Seasons violin concertos (small orchestral works with soloists). Marco Ricci's landscape paintings provided Vivaldi with a view of weather and mood changes in the seasons. For each of his four concertos, Vivaldi wrote a sonnet poem to detail each scene described by the music: in the first movement of the Winter concerto, the punctuation of notes in the strings fall "shivering, frozen… [like] snow in biting, stinging winds." The constant pounding rhythm—contrasted with the furious swirls in the solo violin—paint an early image of program music (a piece that describes a scene), long before it was cool to do so in classical music. Though Vivaldi wrote over 500 concertos, this one remains a favorite, even if it does make us want to curl up next to a fire with a cup of hot chocolate!

Below: a translated version of the Winter poem. Vivaldi's Four Seasons are sometimes performed with readings of the sonnets before each concerto.

Winter

[I: Allegro non molto]

To tremble from cold in the icy snow,
in the harsh breath of a horrid wind;
to run, stamping one’s feet every moment,
our teeth chattering in the extreme cold.

[II: Largo]

Before the fire to pass peaceful,
Contented days while the rain outside pours down.

[III: Allegro]

We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously,
for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and,
rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home
despite the locked and bolted doors …
this is winter, which nonetheless
brings its own delights.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

It might be gray and cold outside, but with Photoshop, it can be any paradise anytime! That's what Photoshop co-create John Knoll thought when he enhanced this 1987 photo of his now-wife, Jennifer Knoll, on a beach in Bora Bora. The two were vacationing after wrapping up special effects work for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? at Lucasfilm's Industrial Light & Magic studios. It was there that John first encountered the Pixar Image Computer, an early machine capable of digital photography manipulation. Unfortunately, the device cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and needed special skills to operate—but John soon found his brother Thomas working on software with similar capabilities that could run on a Macintosh Plus. In the ensuing years, the brothers refined the program into what would eventually become Adobe Photoshop. As John traveled and demoed the software's capabilities, he used one specific photo in his presentations: the 4" x 6" of Jennifer in Paradise. Today, the image is known as one that forever changed the way photo editing was done. The only way it could be more fantastic is if we 'shopped some meme text and cheezburger cats into the water!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

It might be gray and cold outside, but with Photoshop, it can be any paradise anytime! That's what Photoshop co-create John Knoll thought when he enhanced this 1987 photo of his now-wife, Jennifer Knoll, on a beach in Bora Bora. The two were vacationing after wrapping up special effects work for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? at Lucasfilm's Industrial Light & Magic studios. It was there that John first encountered the Pixar Image Computer, an early machine capable of digital photography manipulation. Unfortunately, the device cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and needed special skills to operate—but John soon found his brother Thomas working on software with similar capabilities that could run on a Macintosh Plus. In the ensuing years, the brothers refined the program into what would eventually become Adobe Photoshop. As John traveled and demoed the software's capabilities, he used one specific photo in his presentations: the 4" x 6" of Jennifer in Paradise. Today, the image is known as one that forever changed the way photo editing was done. The only way it could be more fantastic is if we 'shopped some meme text and cheezburger cats into the water!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Title: The Arcadian or Pastoral State
Artist: Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
Created: 1836
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 39.5 x 63.5 in (100 x 161 cm)
Current location: The Met Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York

This scene may not be quite as peaceful as it first appears. It's one of the five works from The Course Of Empire by British-American painter Thomas Cole, recently on view at The Met Fifth Avenue in New York. Each individual work is a snapshot of the same piece of land as it changes through the centuries. It starts out wild and untouched, is plowed over for an overbuilt city, and later destroyed by civil war. This particular painting, the second in the series, is titled The Arcadian or Pastoral State. It captures the happy days before uncontrolled growth: on the far right side, a young couple dances in a meadow, connected by a string of flowers, while a mother in a white dress watches her children play in the foreground. But even here, there are warnings of impending change. Once uncultivated land is now being plowed. On the left side, a man puzzles over a geometrical problem—a sign that numbers may soon grow more important than sunshine and daisies. Cole, who moved to the U.S. 200 years ago this year, was the founder of a group of noted landscape artists called the Hudson River School. He had a simple warning as he watched urban development rapidly change his adopted country: love what you've got.

Below: the other paintings that make up The Course of Empire: The Savage State, The Consummation of Empire, Destruction, and Desolation.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Title: The Arcadian or Pastoral State
Artist: Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
Created: 1836
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 39.5 x 63.5 in (100 x 161 cm)
Current location: The Met Fifth Avenue, New York City, New York

This scene may not be quite as peaceful as it first appears. It's one of the five works from The Course Of Empire by British-American painter Thomas Cole, recently on view at The Met Fifth Avenue in New York. Each individual work is a snapshot of the same piece of land as it changes through the centuries. It starts out wild and untouched, is plowed over for an overbuilt city, and later destroyed by civil war. This particular painting, the second in the series, is titled The Arcadian or Pastoral State. It captures the happy days before uncontrolled growth: on the far right side, a young couple dances in a meadow, connected by a string of flowers, while a mother in a white dress watches her children play in the foreground. But even here, there are warnings of impending change. Once uncultivated land is now being plowed. On the left side, a man puzzles over a geometrical problem—a sign that numbers may soon grow more important than sunshine and daisies. Cole, who moved to the U.S. 200 years ago this year, was the founder of a group of noted landscape artists called the Hudson River School. He had a simple warning as he watched urban development rapidly change his adopted country: love what you've got.

Below: the other paintings that make up The Course of Empire: The Savage State, The Consummation of Empire, Destruction, and Desolation.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.

How do we know when to stop drinking fluids? This is a riddle that has befuddled biologists forever. Our brains know we are thirsty because the cells in our blood and tissue can sense dehydration. But it takes 10 to 15 minutes for cell hydration to occur once we start drinking. Yet, most animals stop drinking within one minute—and not doing so could have dire consequences. So there must be some other biological mechanism, outside of the cells, which tells our brain that our thirst is sated—even though our bodies are still not hydrated.

A team of neuroscientists from the California Institute of Technology thinks they have the answer, as reported recently in Nature. A tiny area of the brain called the median preoptic nucleus, or the thirst center, appears to handle the function both of detecting thirst and detecting drinking. Experimenting with mice, the team determined there are specialized muscles in the throat which can differentiate between the slow movement of chewing/swallowing and the quick movement of drinking/gulping. After detecting a certain amount of drinking action in the throat, the brain region shuts off the thirst response, predicting that the fluids will eventually reach our cells. A malfunction of this process could explain why people suffering from the syndrome polydipsia feel excessive thirst and drink dangerous quantities of water. In the experiments, mice without functioning neurons in the thirst center just kept drinking. Mice also kept drinking if they were first hydrated with a gel form of water, which they had to chew. But when they drank oil, which has no hydrating properties, they stopped drinking. The researchers are now focused on answering other thirst-related questions, like why schizophrenics suffer from insatiable thirst and whether there are sensors in the gut that also work with the thirst center. Did you get all that? It's a lot to swallow!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.

How do we know when to stop drinking fluids? This is a riddle that has befuddled biologists forever. Our brains know we are thirsty because the cells in our blood and tissue can sense dehydration. But it takes 10 to 15 minutes for cell hydration to occur once we start drinking. Yet, most animals stop drinking within one minute—and not doing so could have dire consequences. So there must be some other biological mechanism, outside of the cells, which tells our brain that our thirst is sated—even though our bodies are still not hydrated.

A team of neuroscientists from the California Institute of Technology thinks they have the answer, as reported recently in Nature. A tiny area of the brain called the median preoptic nucleus, or the thirst center, appears to handle the function both of detecting thirst and detecting drinking. Experimenting with mice, the team determined there are specialized muscles in the throat which can differentiate between the slow movement of chewing/swallowing and the quick movement of drinking/gulping. After detecting a certain amount of drinking action in the throat, the brain region shuts off the thirst response, predicting that the fluids will eventually reach our cells. A malfunction of this process could explain why people suffering from the syndrome polydipsia feel excessive thirst and drink dangerous quantities of water. In the experiments, mice without functioning neurons in the thirst center just kept drinking. Mice also kept drinking if they were first hydrated with a gel form of water, which they had to chew. But when they drank oil, which has no hydrating properties, they stopped drinking. The researchers are now focused on answering other thirst-related questions, like why schizophrenics suffer from insatiable thirst and whether there are sensors in the gut that also work with the thirst center. Did you get all that? It's a lot to swallow!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

We didn't know what we had till he was gone. On February 23, 1968, Otis Redding's The Dock of the Bay album was released, featuring the first song to ever posthumously hit #1: (Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay. 1967 saw Redding bring his soul act to enthusiastic crowds at the Monterey Pop Festival, a feat that made him believe he could appeal to pop audiences. Taking inspiration from the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album and a stay in the San Francisco Bay, Redding and guitarist Steve Cropper penned (Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay in late 1967 as a career-reinvention track. Gone was the loud showmanship, and in its place was a gentler vocal performance that allowed melancholic lyrics to shine through. Redding's drifting whistle at the end was only supposed to act as a placeholder until he finished a final verse—one he never got to because of the ill-fated plane crash a few days later. In the wake of the tragedy, Cropper was left to finish and mix one of the best pop tracks of the 20th century, giving the world a taste of what Redding was capable of.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

We didn't know what we had till he was gone. On February 23, 1968, Otis Redding's The Dock of the Bay album was released, featuring the first song to ever posthumously hit #1: (Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay. 1967 saw Redding bring his soul act to enthusiastic crowds at the Monterey Pop Festival, a feat that made him believe he could appeal to pop audiences. Taking inspiration from the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album and a stay in the San Francisco Bay, Redding and guitarist Steve Cropper penned (Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay in late 1967 as a career-reinvention track. Gone was the loud showmanship, and in its place was a gentler vocal performance that allowed melancholic lyrics to shine through. Redding's drifting whistle at the end was only supposed to act as a placeholder until he finished a final verse—one he never got to because of the ill-fated plane crash a few days later. In the wake of the tragedy, Cropper was left to finish and mix one of the best pop tracks of the 20th century, giving the world a taste of what Redding was capable of.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Children light up our lives, and for President Lincoln and his son, Tad, this was especially true. In the final years of his life, Lincoln was preoccupied with the Civil War; he was also mourning his son, Willie, who died of typhoid in 1862. Tad also sorely missed his brother. His mother, Mary Lincoln, was too grief-stricken to care for the child. Lincoln found consolation in the boy's companionship; the two were said to be inseparable. The portrait doesn't show Tad's high spirits and penchant for mischief. Free to roam the White House, he sat in on Cabinet meetings and played pranks on White House guests. He also made a pet of a turkey given to the First Family for Christmas dinner, begging his father to let the bird live. Lincoln relented, thus inspiring the presidential "pardoning" of a turkey every Thanksgiving. This photograph, taken in February 1865, captures a bittersweet moment between father and son—and one of their last. Lincoln was assassinated just two months later.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Children light up our lives, and for President Lincoln and his son, Tad, this was especially true. In the final years of his life, Lincoln was preoccupied with the Civil War; he was also mourning his son, Willie, who died of typhoid in 1862. Tad also sorely missed his brother. His mother, Mary Lincoln, was too grief-stricken to care for the child. Lincoln found consolation in the boy's companionship; the two were said to be inseparable. The portrait doesn't show Tad's high spirits and penchant for mischief. Free to roam the White House, he sat in on Cabinet meetings and played pranks on White House guests. He also made a pet of a turkey given to the First Family for Christmas dinner, begging his father to let the bird live. Lincoln relented, thus inspiring the presidential "pardoning" of a turkey every Thanksgiving. This photograph, taken in February 1865, captures a bittersweet moment between father and son—and one of their last. Lincoln was assassinated just two months later.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Yet another woman written out of history! German artist Lotte Reiniger's groundbreaking work preceded Walt Disney's by a decade, but she rarely gets credit for her role in the evolution of animated film. Reiniger, who would have been 119 this year, began making shadow puppets when she was just a child. She would later employ the same approach to pioneer the technique known as silhouette animation. In her films, many of which reinterpret classic fairy tales, Reiniger created hand-cut silhouettes that moved seamlessly against luminous, jewel-toned backgrounds. She also invented the earliest version of the multiplane motion picture camera, which used glass plates to create the illusion of depth in animated scenes. Reiniger produced her first feature animation, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, in 1926, and Walt Disney closely studied her techniques. Even though Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs wasn't released until 1937—more than 10 years after Reiniger's Prince Achmed—it is usually credited as the first animated film ever made. Reiniger may have been overlooked but that didn't stifle her creativity. She left behind 40 remarkable films—and a small but devoted circle of admirers who savor her work and recognize the value of her legacy. Psst...pass it on!

Below: Frames from Thumbelina, and Aladdin and the Magic Lamp; Reiniger's Cinderella (Aschenputtel).

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Yet another woman written out of history! German artist Lotte Reiniger's groundbreaking work preceded Walt Disney's by a decade, but she rarely gets credit for her role in the evolution of animated film. Reiniger, who would have been 119 this year, began making shadow puppets when she was just a child. She would later employ the same approach to pioneer the technique known as silhouette animation. In her films, many of which reinterpret classic fairy tales, Reiniger created hand-cut silhouettes that moved seamlessly against luminous, jewel-toned backgrounds. She also invented the earliest version of the multiplane motion picture camera, which used glass plates to create the illusion of depth in animated scenes. Reiniger produced her first feature animation, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, in 1926, and Walt Disney closely studied her techniques. Even though Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs wasn't released until 1937—more than 10 years after Reiniger's Prince Achmed—it is usually credited as the first animated film ever made. Reiniger may have been overlooked but that didn't stifle her creativity. She left behind 40 remarkable films—and a small but devoted circle of admirers who savor her work and recognize the value of her legacy. Psst...pass it on!

Below: Frames from Thumbelina, and Aladdin and the Magic Lamp; Reiniger's Cinderella (Aschenputtel).

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.

A Seattle suburb hides war secrets.

Don't be fooled by the sunbathing women, orderly roads, and trimmed lawns. Though it had all the trappings of the average suburb, this town was anything but. During World War II, the idyllic space protected thousands of workers busily drilling airplane parts together right underneath it, inside Boeing Plant No. 2.

The seed was planted in Washington, D.C., in 1940; Congress had just approved funding for manufacturers to churn out 50,000 new military planes a year, anticipating U.S. involvement in World War II. The Boeing company had provided the military with seaplanes during the First World War; this time around, it was asked to produce 17,000 B-17 fighter planes. Enter Boeing Plant No. 2. Situated on a former shipbuilding site near the Duwamish River, it was nicknamed "The Fortress Factory" and measured eight football fields long. Its sheer size made it the perfect place to set up an airplane-building operation requiring thousands of employees working double shifts. Many were women in their first manufacturing jobs—much like Rosie the Riveter herself.

Each B-17 cost about $200,000, the equivalent of a whopping $3.4 million today. As the war raged on, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers came up with creative ideas to prevent the factory from becoming an air strike target. The Army Corps took inspiration from actual suburbs near the plant when designing their fake town, which was built on a grid exactly like that of neighboring communities.

Not a single detail was missed. Trees were crafted from chicken wire and feathers, while large wooden slabs were nailed together to look like cars. Houses appeared real from the point of view of an enemy plane scouting the area from above; a closer examination revealed some were shorter than potential homeowners! Though aware of the seriousness of their task, the Army Corps wasn't above humor; signposts appeared at street corners with names like "Burlap Boulevard" and "Synthetic Street."

The fake town certainly did its job: the plant survived the war, having produced almost all of the commissioned B-17s, as well as B-29 Superfortress planes—the most technologically advanced American military aircraft at the time. After the war, it produced commercial planes before being demolished in 2010 to make way for ecological restoration to the area. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had some strange ideas—but they sure took flight!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.

A Seattle suburb hides war secrets.

Don't be fooled by the sunbathing women, orderly roads, and trimmed lawns. Though it had all the trappings of the average suburb, this town was anything but. During World War II, the idyllic space protected thousands of workers busily drilling airplane parts together right underneath it, inside Boeing Plant No. 2.

The seed was planted in Washington, D.C., in 1940; Congress had just approved funding for manufacturers to churn out 50,000 new military planes a year, anticipating U.S. involvement in World War II. The Boeing company had provided the military with seaplanes during the First World War; this time around, it was asked to produce 17,000 B-17 fighter planes. Enter Boeing Plant No. 2. Situated on a former shipbuilding site near the Duwamish River, it was nicknamed "The Fortress Factory" and measured eight football fields long. Its sheer size made it the perfect place to set up an airplane-building operation requiring thousands of employees working double shifts. Many were women in their first manufacturing jobs—much like Rosie the Riveter herself.

Each B-17 cost about $200,000, the equivalent of a whopping $3.4 million today. As the war raged on, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers came up with creative ideas to prevent the factory from becoming an air strike target. The Army Corps took inspiration from actual suburbs near the plant when designing their fake town, which was built on a grid exactly like that of neighboring communities.

Not a single detail was missed. Trees were crafted from chicken wire and feathers, while large wooden slabs were nailed together to look like cars. Houses appeared real from the point of view of an enemy plane scouting the area from above; a closer examination revealed some were shorter than potential homeowners! Though aware of the seriousness of their task, the Army Corps wasn't above humor; signposts appeared at street corners with names like "Burlap Boulevard" and "Synthetic Street."

The fake town certainly did its job: the plant survived the war, having produced almost all of the commissioned B-17s, as well as B-29 Superfortress planes—the most technologically advanced American military aircraft at the time. After the war, it produced commercial planes before being demolished in 2010 to make way for ecological restoration to the area. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had some strange ideas—but they sure took flight!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Barbara Streisand's home in Malibu is the stuff of celebrity legend. The singer reportedly has an early 20th-century mall in her basement. Though you won't find a Sunglass Hut or Hot Topic down there, her collections of clothing, dolls, and a reported frozen yogurt kiosk each have their own storage space in the form of storefronts. Streisand poked fun at her own interior decorating habits in her duet with comedienne Melissa McCarthy on the show tune Anything You Can Do. From the 2016 album Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway, McCarthy and Streisand have a jazzy battle over movie roles, ridiculous last name pronunciations, and (eventually) musical and emotional harmony. Few people can claim their first time in a recording studio was with Streisand, though that's exactly what happened to McCarthy. As for Babs, she can add the tune and album to her mantle—where six other decades' worth of her chart-topping albums are probably displayed!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Barbara Streisand's home in Malibu is the stuff of celebrity legend. The singer reportedly has an early 20th-century mall in her basement. Though you won't find a Sunglass Hut or Hot Topic down there, her collections of clothing, dolls, and a reported frozen yogurt kiosk each have their own storage space in the form of storefronts. Streisand poked fun at her own interior decorating habits in her duet with comedienne Melissa McCarthy on the show tune Anything You Can Do. From the 2016 album Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway, McCarthy and Streisand have a jazzy battle over movie roles, ridiculous last name pronunciations, and (eventually) musical and emotional harmony. Few people can claim their first time in a recording studio was with Streisand, though that's exactly what happened to McCarthy. As for Babs, she can add the tune and album to her mantle—where six other decades' worth of her chart-topping albums are probably displayed!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

It's clear who's boss in this town! Between 2013 and 2015, Berlin-based photographer Karolin Klüppel traveled to the matrilineal Indian village of Mawlynnong to photograph dozens of girls who will lead their community when their mothers pass away. This image shows a seven-year-old girl named Grace Tangsong wearing a fierce necklace she's crafted out of fish skeletons. Grace's peers appear in other pictures as they adeptly balance against a wall, entertain themselves with a mosquito net, and daydream by a pond; the photographs depict the girls' creativity, resourcefulness, and connection to their physical environment. "In the Khasi culture, women and girls have a special standing in the society," Kluppel says. "This exceptional role 'produces' a great self-confidence." By tradition, a woman's youngest daughter will inherit her home, land, and last name. The matrilineal set-up has been around for centuries, stemming from a time when the Khasi had several romantic partners, making it difficult to trace paternity. It's also possible the practice took hold while Khasi men were away fighting in war. Whatever the reason, it sounds like the residents of Mawlynnong have got something figured out: they boast some of the highest rates of cleanliness and literacy of any village in India.

Below: Grace makes "scary eyes"; a girl named Ibapyntngen remains still while insects play across her face; Wanda stands amid the village's lush greenery; Ibapyntngen plays with a mosquito net.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

It's clear who's boss in this town! Between 2013 and 2015, Berlin-based photographer Karolin Klüppel traveled to the matrilineal Indian village of Mawlynnong to photograph dozens of girls who will lead their community when their mothers pass away. This image shows a seven-year-old girl named Grace Tangsong wearing a fierce necklace she's crafted out of fish skeletons. Grace's peers appear in other pictures as they adeptly balance against a wall, entertain themselves with a mosquito net, and daydream by a pond; the photographs depict the girls' creativity, resourcefulness, and connection to their physical environment. "In the Khasi culture, women and girls have a special standing in the society," Kluppel says. "This exceptional role 'produces' a great self-confidence." By tradition, a woman's youngest daughter will inherit her home, land, and last name. The matrilineal set-up has been around for centuries, stemming from a time when the Khasi had several romantic partners, making it difficult to trace paternity. It's also possible the practice took hold while Khasi men were away fighting in war. Whatever the reason, it sounds like the residents of Mawlynnong have got something figured out: they boast some of the highest rates of cleanliness and literacy of any village in India.

Below: Grace makes "scary eyes"; a girl named Ibapyntngen remains still while insects play across her face; Wanda stands amid the village's lush greenery; Ibapyntngen plays with a mosquito net.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Let's plop this Curio right here—it'll be our little secret. For 31 seasons spanning the years of 1983 to 1994, Bob Ross soothed audiences on The Joy of Painting with his tranquilizing voice, making art accessible to anyone. While painting pieces like Night Light (Lighthouse At Night), he coached viewers through his steps, quelling any of their frustrations along the way, famously stating, "We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents." Ross, once an Air Force master sergeant, flocked to landscape painting after watching German artist Bill Alexander's show, The Magic of Oil Painting. Under Alexander's tutelage, Ross was taught the "wet-on-wet" technique, where the painting must be finished before the first layer dries. Ross proved an exceptional disciple, so Alexander appointed him as his show's successor. But years down the line, Alexander held Ross in contempt, evidently threatened by his protege's cult following. "I invented 'wet-on-wet,'" he said of the centuries-old technique. Maybe if Alexander had treated painting like the therapeutic process Ross did for 403 episodes of The Joy of Painting, he would have forgiven, forgotten, and befriended some happy little trees.

Below: Bob Ross at work on The Joy of Painting; some of Ross' winter-themed paintings; and a statistical analysis of Ross' oeuvre.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Let's plop this Curio right here—it'll be our little secret. For 31 seasons spanning the years of 1983 to 1994, Bob Ross soothed audiences on The Joy of Painting with his tranquilizing voice, making art accessible to anyone. While painting pieces like Night Light (Lighthouse At Night), he coached viewers through his steps, quelling any of their frustrations along the way, famously stating, "We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents." Ross, once an Air Force master sergeant, flocked to landscape painting after watching German artist Bill Alexander's show, The Magic of Oil Painting. Under Alexander's tutelage, Ross was taught the "wet-on-wet" technique, where the painting must be finished before the first layer dries. Ross proved an exceptional disciple, so Alexander appointed him as his show's successor. But years down the line, Alexander held Ross in contempt, evidently threatened by his protege's cult following. "I invented 'wet-on-wet,'" he said of the centuries-old technique. Maybe if Alexander had treated painting like the therapeutic process Ross did for 403 episodes of The Joy of Painting, he would have forgiven, forgotten, and befriended some happy little trees.

Below: Bob Ross at work on The Joy of Painting; some of Ross' winter-themed paintings; and a statistical analysis of Ross' oeuvre.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.

Sometimes, it's the smallest changes that make the largest differences. That's often called the Butterfly Effect, based on the idea that the beat of a butterfly's wings can start a tornado. The sequence below is not that far removed from a sequence you'd probably recognize.

What's the next number in this sequence?

1, 1, -1, -3, -1, 5, 7, -3, -17, -11, 23, 45, ...

Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #122" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.

Sometimes, it's the smallest changes that make the largest differences. That's often called the Butterfly Effect, based on the idea that the beat of a butterfly's wings can start a tornado. The sequence below is not that far removed from a sequence you'd probably recognize.

What's the next number in this sequence?

1, 1, -1, -3, -1, 5, 7, -3, -17, -11, 23, 45, ...

Think you know the answer? Email support@curious.com with the subject "Teaser #122" and let us know, or check back next week to find out!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

We oughta know who inspired Alanis Morissette's biggest hit! Much speculation has been given to the unidentified scorned lover cited in her debut U.S. single You Oughta Know, from her June 1995 album Jagged Little Pill. One of the internet's favorite rumors is that it was Dave Coulier of the television series Full House. Aside from jokingly telling comedian Larry David on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Morissette has kept her lips firmly sealed on the subject. What we do know is You Oughta Know wasn't just a flash-in-the-pan hit. Rock 'n' roll heavyweights Dave Navarro and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers helped shape the guitar and bass parts to match Morissette's searing vocals. The track also employs staples of '90s music, namely mixing live and programmed drum machine rhythm parts, and running away with the "loud-quiet-loud" sonic dynamic made popular by the Pixies and Nirvana. All these elements came together to propel You Oughta Know to the top of Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks, and help sell a whopping 15 million copies of Jagged Little Pill—and those aren't hard facts to swallow!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

We oughta know who inspired Alanis Morissette's biggest hit! Much speculation has been given to the unidentified scorned lover cited in her debut U.S. single You Oughta Know, from her June 1995 album Jagged Little Pill. One of the internet's favorite rumors is that it was Dave Coulier of the television series Full House. Aside from jokingly telling comedian Larry David on an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Morissette has kept her lips firmly sealed on the subject. What we do know is You Oughta Know wasn't just a flash-in-the-pan hit. Rock 'n' roll heavyweights Dave Navarro and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers helped shape the guitar and bass parts to match Morissette's searing vocals. The track also employs staples of '90s music, namely mixing live and programmed drum machine rhythm parts, and running away with the "loud-quiet-loud" sonic dynamic made popular by the Pixies and Nirvana. All these elements came together to propel You Oughta Know to the top of Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks, and help sell a whopping 15 million copies of Jagged Little Pill—and those aren't hard facts to swallow!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Some photographers' work makes us think, "I could have taken that picture!" But Markus Brunetti doesn't make it look easy, not for a second. The German photographer creates meticulously rendered images of facades of beautiful old churches, like the picture of Amiens, Cathédrale Notre-Dame, 2009–2016, above. Brunetti takes thousands of high-resolution images of each facade, capturing every minute detail. He digitally assembles the close-up photos, removing modern items like cars and street lamps, to create a completed, hyper-real image. These works are as detailed as engravings made by 17th-century European artists. Brunetti's is a painstaking process; it typically takes him a year or more to complete an image. He compares his art to that of the architects and laborers who originally worked on the buildings centuries ago. Says Brunetti, "I try to work on this series with the same spirit and patience they must have had when starting to work on those now historic monuments."

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Some photographers' work makes us think, "I could have taken that picture!" But Markus Brunetti doesn't make it look easy, not for a second. The German photographer creates meticulously rendered images of facades of beautiful old churches, like the picture of Amiens, Cathédrale Notre-Dame, 2009–2016, above. Brunetti takes thousands of high-resolution images of each facade, capturing every minute detail. He digitally assembles the close-up photos, removing modern items like cars and street lamps, to create a completed, hyper-real image. These works are as detailed as engravings made by 17th-century European artists. Brunetti's is a painstaking process; it typically takes him a year or more to complete an image. He compares his art to that of the architects and laborers who originally worked on the buildings centuries ago. Says Brunetti, "I try to work on this series with the same spirit and patience they must have had when starting to work on those now historic monuments."

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Title: Butterflies

Artist: Raku Inoue
Created: c. 2017
Medium: plant fragments

Plants aren't just being pollinated by bugs anymore: plants are becoming the bugs. Montreal-based artist Raku Inoue's Natural Insects Series shows just how flower arranging can be the bee's knees. The process of creating these plant collages has been a cathartic one for Inoue: as a teenager, he struggled with finding a balance between his Canadian and Japanese identities. Through experimenting with various mixed media, Inoue took up ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging—which emphasizes the use of seasonal foliage as opposed to pretty bouquets. These days, Inoue often takes petals or twigs that have fallen after a storm and applies them to his lush butterflies or dandelion beetles. Creating these critters is also a decompression process for Inoue, giving him the chance to make personalized art outside of the demands of his ad agency work. We bet an infestation of these delicate crawlers would be just the thing to cheer anyone up!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Title: Butterflies

Artist: Raku Inoue
Created: c. 2017
Medium: plant fragments

Plants aren't just being pollinated by bugs anymore: plants are becoming the bugs. Montreal-based artist Raku Inoue's Natural Insects Series shows just how flower arranging can be the bee's knees. The process of creating these plant collages has been a cathartic one for Inoue: as a teenager, he struggled with finding a balance between his Canadian and Japanese identities. Through experimenting with various mixed media, Inoue took up ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging—which emphasizes the use of seasonal foliage as opposed to pretty bouquets. These days, Inoue often takes petals or twigs that have fallen after a storm and applies them to his lush butterflies or dandelion beetles. Creating these critters is also a decompression process for Inoue, giving him the chance to make personalized art outside of the demands of his ad agency work. We bet an infestation of these delicate crawlers would be just the thing to cheer anyone up!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.

How did people survive the summers before ice, air conditioning, and plumbing? Ancient Iranians—who inhabited a region where temperatures reach 125°F/ 52°C in the summer—devised an ingenious solution over 3,000 years ago. They invented something that transported fresh water hundreds of miles, produced and stored ice, cooled their homes, and enabled lush gardens in the middle of the desert. These feats of engineering, called qanats, were underground channels that transported water from mountain sources to desert cities below. A series of shafts with anthill like domes were cut every few hundred feet to ventilate workers who excavated massive amounts of earth. Some shafts were 300 meters deep! Calculating the slope of the qanat was critical: too steep and the water eroded the channel, too flat and it wouldn't flow. Once the qanat reached the town, the water provided not just sustenance but also cooling. Rooftop wind-catching vents, called badgirs, captured warm air and directed it underground. There the air was cooled by the qanat's water and directed back through the basement of the house. Some of the basements also contained yakhchals, literally "ice pits." Water from the qanat was diverted into the basement during the winter and left to freeze. Then the ice was cut into blocks and kept cool during the summer, by the qanats of course. Qanats also served a spiritual purpose. They irrigated the miraculous ancient Persian gardens—with trees, flowers, fountains, and waterways—that were constructed in harmony with the Zoroastrian worship of nature. In fact, the word "paradise" is derived from the Persian words "pari" and "daida" or "walled garden." Wow, these qanats did everything for ancient Iranians but take them to the moon. Actually, I've just been informed that if you stacked up all the qanats still found in Iran, they would reach the moon!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.

How did people survive the summers before ice, air conditioning, and plumbing? Ancient Iranians—who inhabited a region where temperatures reach 125°F/ 52°C in the summer—devised an ingenious solution over 3,000 years ago. They invented something that transported fresh water hundreds of miles, produced and stored ice, cooled their homes, and enabled lush gardens in the middle of the desert. These feats of engineering, called qanats, were underground channels that transported water from mountain sources to desert cities below. A series of shafts with anthill like domes were cut every few hundred feet to ventilate workers who excavated massive amounts of earth. Some shafts were 300 meters deep! Calculating the slope of the qanat was critical: too steep and the water eroded the channel, too flat and it wouldn't flow. Once the qanat reached the town, the water provided not just sustenance but also cooling. Rooftop wind-catching vents, called badgirs, captured warm air and directed it underground. There the air was cooled by the qanat's water and directed back through the basement of the house. Some of the basements also contained yakhchals, literally "ice pits." Water from the qanat was diverted into the basement during the winter and left to freeze. Then the ice was cut into blocks and kept cool during the summer, by the qanats of course. Qanats also served a spiritual purpose. They irrigated the miraculous ancient Persian gardens—with trees, flowers, fountains, and waterways—that were constructed in harmony with the Zoroastrian worship of nature. In fact, the word "paradise" is derived from the Persian words "pari" and "daida" or "walled garden." Wow, these qanats did everything for ancient Iranians but take them to the moon. Actually, I've just been informed that if you stacked up all the qanats still found in Iran, they would reach the moon!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Dancing around the living room has never looked so good. In a recently released promotional video for the Apple HomePod speaker, director Spike Jonze recruited electronica and dance artist FKA Twigs to quite literally push the boundaries of her apartment. Twigs comes home from a dreary workday to find out listening to the trippy 'Til It's Over by Anderson .Paak transforms her home into a colorful dance studio. Jonze, who directed mind-bending features like Being John Malkovich and elaborately-choreographed music videos like Fatboy Slim's Praise You, surprisingly went CGI-less for the short film; Twigs' room extends the boundaries of reality using a combination of levers, hydraulics, and the production crew pushing movable walls. .Paak's genre-defying sound provides the perfect soundtrack; 'Til It's Over combines hip-hop samples, a live jazz band (The Free Nationals), and .Paak's own hot beats played on the drums. His work recalls some of the smoothest '70s funk and soul with a futuristic twist. Next time we think of redecorating, we're definitely going to turn up .Paak's song and do it in style!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Dancing around the living room has never looked so good. In a recently released promotional video for the Apple HomePod speaker, director Spike Jonze recruited electronica and dance artist FKA Twigs to quite literally push the boundaries of her apartment. Twigs comes home from a dreary workday to find out listening to the trippy 'Til It's Over by Anderson .Paak transforms her home into a colorful dance studio. Jonze, who directed mind-bending features like Being John Malkovich and elaborately-choreographed music videos like Fatboy Slim's Praise You, surprisingly went CGI-less for the short film; Twigs' room extends the boundaries of reality using a combination of levers, hydraulics, and the production crew pushing movable walls. .Paak's genre-defying sound provides the perfect soundtrack; 'Til It's Over combines hip-hop samples, a live jazz band (The Free Nationals), and .Paak's own hot beats played on the drums. His work recalls some of the smoothest '70s funk and soul with a futuristic twist. Next time we think of redecorating, we're definitely going to turn up .Paak's song and do it in style!

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Roll, Forrest, roll! This image captures snow rollers as they make their way down a slope in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park. If the icy wheel looks unfamiliar, it's because it only appears under a special set of circumstances. The snow's temperature has to be a couple degrees above freezing—otherwise, it'll be too hard to form a shape. A layer of ice or packed snow should be topped with a dusting of flakes, making it easier for the snow to stick to itself as it tumbles down a gentle slope like the one above—just like icing might be used to hold together a rolled pastry. Though it's easier for this phenomenon to take place on a hill, rollers have also appeared throughout the Midwest. Snow rollers often leave long tracks behind them, which makes it look like humans have been involved with their creation. But make no mistake: only Mother Nature can take credit for these mysterious formations.

Below: snow rollers on a roof in the Giant Mountains range in eastern Europe; the strange phenomenon turns up in the fields of Scotland.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

Roll, Forrest, roll! This image captures snow rollers as they make their way down a slope in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park. If the icy wheel looks unfamiliar, it's because it only appears under a special set of circumstances. The snow's temperature has to be a couple degrees above freezing—otherwise, it'll be too hard to form a shape. A layer of ice or packed snow should be topped with a dusting of flakes, making it easier for the snow to stick to itself as it tumbles down a gentle slope like the one above—just like icing might be used to hold together a rolled pastry. Though it's easier for this phenomenon to take place on a hill, rollers have also appeared throughout the Midwest. Snow rollers often leave long tracks behind them, which makes it look like humans have been involved with their creation. But make no mistake: only Mother Nature can take credit for these mysterious formations.

Below: snow rollers on a roof in the Giant Mountains range in eastern Europe; the strange phenomenon turns up in the fields of Scotland.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

When did Keyboard Cat get so groovy? In the 19th century, English illustrator Louis Wain critiqued Victorian society with his tea-sipping, anthropomorphized felines—but it seems his kitties added something suspect to their brew. Born August 5, 1860, Wain likely painted this furry pianist in one of the many psychiatric hospitals he was shunted to later in his life, after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. To achieve such rich color and thick strokes, Wain painted with opaque watercolors called gouache. He never dated his doodles, but art historians tend to sort this jazzy feline amongst his earlier works, for as he aged, the cats gradually disengaged into wonderful psychedelia: vivid abstractions that give Buddhist mandalas a run for their technical money. He experienced what he called "visions of extraordinary complexity," but retained much of his artistic training, even as he wholly lost autonomy. Thanks to a petition by sci-fi author H. G. Wells, a fan of Wain's, the artist was allowed to live in an Edenic garden amongst a colony of cats during his prolific final years.

Welcome to our Top 18 of 2018 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .

When did Keyboard Cat get so groovy? In the 19th century, English illustrator Louis Wain critiqued Victorian society with his tea-sipping, anthropomorphized felines—but it seems his kitties added something suspect to their brew. Born August 5, 1860, Wain likely painted this furry pianist in one of the many psychiatric hospitals he was shunted to later in his life, after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. To achieve such rich color and thick strokes, Wain painted with opaque watercolors called gouache. He never dated his doodles, but art historians tend to sort this jazzy feline amongst his earlier works, for as he aged, the cats gradually disengaged into wonderful psychedelia: vivid abstractions that give Buddhist mandalas a run for their technical money. He experienced what he called "visions of extraordinary complexity," but retained much of his artistic training, even as he wholly lost autonomy. Thanks to a petition by sci-fi author H. G. Wells, a fan of Wain's, the artist was allowed to live in an Edenic garden amongst a colony of cats during his prolific final years.

For today's '80s Themed Thursday, we're looking past the leg warmers, big hair, and neon sports jackets of the "Me-First Decade" to a much more ominous sign of the times: Dungeons and Dragons. Created in 1974, the fantasy role-playing game (RPG) quickly became a refuge to geeks looking to escape the woes of adolescence and mundane life. But the fantasy dice game took a bizarre turn in the early '80s. Several grieving mothers of boys who committed suicide, desperately seeking answers, misattributed their sons' deaths to the game. One was Patricia Pulling, who sued her son's high school principal, believing the curse on her boy's D&D character had carried into the real world. She also sued the publisher of the game, TSR Inc. Both suits were quickly dismissed. Undeterred, Pulling established the public advocacy group "Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons" (BADD) in 1983. She, and a legion of other frazzled mothers, made media appearances to vilify D&D as a gateway to the occult. They described a game in which "demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder… necromantics, divination, and other teachings" would become accessible to children on a mass scale. Combined with the Goth subculture imported from Britain, America found itself in the midst of the great "Satanic Panic" of the '80s. It was a classic expression of moral panic, not unlike the fear of gory comic books in the '50s and Communism in the '60s. The D&D terror faded in the early '90s, but not before a wave of laughable public service announcements. As for Pulling, she continued her crusade until her death in 1997, even as it became increasingly obvious she was disturbed and fabricating statistics. At one point she claimed eight percent of Richmond, Virginia's population were practicing Satanists—a "conservative figure." That seems unlikely. Though I'll bet way more than eight percent of Richmond's high school kids were carrying around 12- and 20-sided D&D dice at the time.

For today's '80s Themed Thursday, we're looking past the leg warmers, big hair, and neon sports jackets of the "Me-First Decade" to a much more ominous sign of the times: Dungeons and Dragons. Created in 1974, the fantasy role-playing game (RPG) quickly became a refuge to geeks looking to escape the woes of adolescence and mundane life. But the fantasy dice game took a bizarre turn in the early '80s. Several grieving mothers of boys who committed suicide, desperately seeking answers, misattributed their sons' deaths to the game. One was Patricia Pulling, who sued her son's high school principal, believing the curse on her boy's D&D character had carried into the real world. She also sued the publisher of the game, TSR Inc. Both suits were quickly dismissed. Undeterred, Pulling established the public advocacy group "Bothered About Dungeons and Dragons" (BADD) in 1983. She, and a legion of other frazzled mothers, made media appearances to vilify D&D as a gateway to the occult. They described a game in which "demonology, witchcraft, voodoo, murder… necromantics, divination, and other teachings" would become accessible to children on a mass scale. Combined with the Goth subculture imported from Britain, America found itself in the midst of the great "Satanic Panic" of the '80s. It was a classic expression of moral panic, not unlike the fear of gory comic books in the '50s and Communism in the '60s. The D&D terror faded in the early '90s, but not before a wave of laughable public service announcements. As for Pulling, she continued her crusade until her death in 1997, even as it became increasingly obvious she was disturbed and fabricating statistics. At one point she claimed eight percent of Richmond, Virginia's population were practicing Satanists—a "conservative figure." That seems unlikely. Though I'll bet way more than eight percent of Richmond's high school kids were carrying around 12- and 20-sided D&D dice at the time.

In the early '80s, few brands blatantly borrowed from the pop-inspired, saturated-color aesthetic of the Memphis Group as MTV did. So it was no wonder that when the music video channel told Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits that they wanted a concept video for the band's song, Money for Nothing, the brightly-tacky Memphis aesthetics would be applied to an early computer animation video. Knopfler—who was already an established guitar virtuoso and respected songwriter—wasn't sold on the idea initially. It took director Steve Barron of Rushes Postproduction a few tries to get the singer behind the idea of having two blue-collar luddites acting out the lyrics in a geometric pastel world. Luckily, Knopfler came around and the video for Money for Nothing eventually earned the Video of the Year award at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1986. Not bad for a song that was about an appliance store worker criticizing MTV's music videos!

In the early '80s, few brands blatantly borrowed from the pop-inspired, saturated-color aesthetic of the Memphis Group as MTV did. So it was no wonder that when the music video channel told Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits that they wanted a concept video for the band's song, Money for Nothing, the brightly-tacky Memphis aesthetics would be applied to an early computer animation video. Knopfler—who was already an established guitar virtuoso and respected songwriter—wasn't sold on the idea initially. It took director Steve Barron of Rushes Postproduction a few tries to get the singer behind the idea of having two blue-collar luddites acting out the lyrics in a geometric pastel world. Luckily, Knopfler came around and the video for Money for Nothing eventually earned the Video of the Year award at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1986. Not bad for a song that was about an appliance store worker criticizing MTV's music videos!

Can a single art show be responsible for a decade's worth of style aesthetics? It's easy to make the case for Ettore Sottsass' Memphis Group, which formed on December 11, 1980, and introduced the world to its quirky aesthetics a year later at the furniture fair in the Salone del Mobile of Milan, Italy. Sottass' Carlton room divider no doubt would have been an odd duck among finely crafted carpentry and upholstery. The clashing colors, laminate plastics—not to mention the odd Jenga-like balancing act and Sottsass' Bacterio print in the base—must have made for an unusual first impression. The whimsy, anti-minimalist angles, and squiggly nature of Sottsass' work found immediate fans in Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld and musician David Bowie. As for the rest of us, if we enjoyed any moment of Beetlejuice, Saved by the Bell—or more serious '80s fare like Miami Vice—it's worth noting there was definitely a fan of Sottsass and the Memphis Group's aesthetics behind set designs and costuming!

Below: we originally couldn't see Sottsass' Carlton as a room divider, until we found the right room for it—one decorated entirely in Memphis art pieces. The name of the group also stems from a Bob Dylan song Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, a track that played on repeat at the first Memphis Group meeting.

Can a single art show be responsible for a decade's worth of style aesthetics? It's easy to make the case for Ettore Sottsass' Memphis Group, which formed on December 11, 1980, and introduced the world to its quirky aesthetics a year later at the furniture fair in the Salone del Mobile of Milan, Italy. Sottass' Carlton room divider no doubt would have been an odd duck among finely crafted carpentry and upholstery. The clashing colors, laminate plastics—not to mention the odd Jenga-like balancing act and Sottsass' Bacterio print in the base—must have made for an unusual first impression. The whimsy, anti-minimalist angles, and squiggly nature of Sottsass' work found immediate fans in Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld and musician David Bowie. As for the rest of us, if we enjoyed any moment of Beetlejuice, Saved by the Bell—or more serious '80s fare like Miami Vice—it's worth noting there was definitely a fan of Sottsass and the Memphis Group's aesthetics behind set designs and costuming!

Below: we originally couldn't see Sottsass' Carlton as a room divider, until we found the right room for it—one decorated entirely in Memphis art pieces. The name of the group also stems from a Bob Dylan song Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again, a track that played on repeat at the first Memphis Group meeting.

'80s nostalgia never looked as good as it does with Charlotte Love. The London photo stylist and prop designer composed the above still life with print combinations and heavy color blocking (pairing multiple solid colors) for the online Heart Home magazine, with photography by Joanna Henderson. With such a whimsical imagination that also brings us veggies and household items with silly faces on her Instagram feed, it's no wonder Love gravitates toward the fun aesthetics of the Memphis Group. But it's Love's keen eye that makes her more than just an imitator; she applies muted colors and soft shapes to the arrangements in her commercial photography that create a reimagined version of '80s art, which makes for some cozy interior decorating. In any case, we know that pink banana would be quite the conversation starter at parties!

Below: more of Love's work from the Eye on the Ball series with Alex Edwards, and styling Clarks Shoes with Bill Bradshaw's photography.

'80s nostalgia never looked as good as it does with Charlotte Love. The London photo stylist and prop designer composed the above still life with print combinations and heavy color blocking (pairing multiple solid colors) for the online Heart Home magazine, with photography by Joanna Henderson. With such a whimsical imagination that also brings us veggies and household items with silly faces on her Instagram feed, it's no wonder Love gravitates toward the fun aesthetics of the Memphis Group. But it's Love's keen eye that makes her more than just an imitator; she applies muted colors and soft shapes to the arrangements in her commercial photography that create a reimagined version of '80s art, which makes for some cozy interior decorating. In any case, we know that pink banana would be quite the conversation starter at parties!

Below: more of Love's work from the Eye on the Ball series with Alex Edwards, and styling Clarks Shoes with Bill Bradshaw's photography.

What's up with all the red and green at Christmas? Believe it or not, that's the exact question that Spike Bucklow, of Cambridge University, ended up answering, Bucklow set out to study rood screens, ornately decorated screens which separated the congregation from the clergy in medieval churches. They fell out of fashion during the Reformation in the 16th century, when many elaborate Christian artworks were rejected and even destroyed. But Bucklow's home region of Eastern England has the largest concentration of rood screens in Europe. And as Bucklow started to study them, he noticed a vast majority of the screens were predominantly red and green. He knew that the red pigments of that era came from iron; and the green came from copper. Furthermore, he knew artists of the time imbued meaning into their choice of colors. Iron was associated with Mars, and copper with Venus. And, yes, men were from Mars and women were from Venus—even back then. Bucklow hypothesized that this duality of colors on the screens was meant to grant equal access to God for men and women of the congregation. But how did they come to represent Christmas? Buckley believes that when Victorian-era Christians began rediscovering the beautiful rood screens, they started associating the red and green colors with Christmas. But even into the 20th century, there were many other colors associated with the holiday. Not only was Santa usually depicted as thin and elf-like, but his robes were often royal purple or blue. It took the Coca-Cola company to change that. They commissioned an artist to draw a modern Santa Claus drinking a Coke. Naturally he dressed his Santa in a Coca-Cola red suit. For the background he chose a
forest green. The rest is ho-ho-history.

What's up with all the red and green at Christmas? Believe it or not, that's the exact question that Spike Bucklow, of Cambridge University, ended up answering, Bucklow set out to study rood screens, ornately decorated screens which separated the congregation from the clergy in medieval churches. They fell out of fashion during the Reformation in the 16th century, when many elaborate Christian artworks were rejected and even destroyed. But Bucklow's home region of Eastern England has the largest concentration of rood screens in Europe. And as Bucklow started to study them, he noticed a vast majority of the screens were predominantly red and green. He knew that the red pigments of that era came from iron; and the green came from copper. Furthermore, he knew artists of the time imbued meaning into their choice of colors. Iron was associated with Mars, and copper with Venus. And, yes, men were from Mars and women were from Venus—even back then. Bucklow hypothesized that this duality of colors on the screens was meant to grant equal access to God for men and women of the congregation. But how did they come to represent Christmas? Buckley believes that when Victorian-era Christians began rediscovering the beautiful rood screens, they started associating the red and green colors with Christmas. But even into the 20th century, there were many other colors associated with the holiday. Not only was Santa usually depicted as thin and elf-like, but his robes were often royal purple or blue. It took the Coca-Cola company to change that. They commissioned an artist to draw a modern Santa Claus drinking a Coke. Naturally he dressed his Santa in a Coca-Cola red suit. For the background he chose a
forest green. The rest is ho-ho-history.

On December 8, 1980, the world lost a musical icon and counterculture hero in John Lennon. In the days following his assassination, thousands of fans flocked to the Dakota Apartments in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and nearby Central Park to pay their respects. Monday Night Football sports commentators took time out of their play-by-play action to notify viewers of Lennon's shooting; radio stations like WNEW-FM 102.7 in New York suspended their regular programming to take calls from listeners and devote time to Lennon's musical legacy. Things became so overwhelming that Lennon's widow Yoko Ono sent word to the grieving crowd that their overnight singing had kept her awake, and that they should reconvene at Central Park's Naumburg Bandshell for ten minutes of silent prayer. Following Ono's instructions, a crowd of over 225,000 people converged on Central Park on December 14th, with local radio stations in accord going silent for the 10-minute memorial, and the above image was taken in commemoration of the event. The massive gathering was evidence of how Lennon's music had touched so many lives with its themes of peace, love, and open-mindedness.

Below: more images from the days immediately following Lennon's shooting at the Dakota.

On December 8, 1980, the world lost a musical icon and counterculture hero in John Lennon. In the days following his assassination, thousands of fans flocked to the Dakota Apartments in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and nearby Central Park to pay their respects. Monday Night Football sports commentators took time out of their play-by-play action to notify viewers of Lennon's shooting; radio stations like WNEW-FM 102.7 in New York suspended their regular programming to take calls from listeners and devote time to Lennon's musical legacy. Things became so overwhelming that Lennon's widow Yoko Ono sent word to the grieving crowd that their overnight singing had kept her awake, and that they should reconvene at Central Park's Naumburg Bandshell for ten minutes of silent prayer. Following Ono's instructions, a crowd of over 225,000 people converged on Central Park on December 14th, with local radio stations in accord going silent for the 10-minute memorial, and the above image was taken in commemoration of the event. The massive gathering was evidence of how Lennon's music had touched so many lives with its themes of peace, love, and open-mindedness.

Below: more images from the days immediately following Lennon's shooting at the Dakota.

With John Piper's versatile body of work, one can practically visualize the history of Britain during the 20th century. The above depiction of Flintham Hall in the village of Flintham in Nottinghamshire, England, was from his late period, when he took to promoting the architecture and pastoral appeal of his native land. Piper, like many artists of his time, was heavily influenced by Picasso and the avant-garde, and initially painted abstractions. It was during World War II when Piper moved to figurative representation, sometimes even capturing war-torn buildings while they were on fire from night raids. Some would argue his creativity peaked during those years, though there is a lot to be said for his print illustration of Flintham and its intact structure. As if the decimation of one era did not have to overshadow the peace and architectural stability of the latter era. And what a relief to any of us to know that kind of hope and resilience exists in this world.

Below: more of Piper's buildings, including Jazeene, Charente, the archways of Holdenby, and Covehithe Church.

With John Piper's versatile body of work, one can practically visualize the history of Britain during the 20th century. The above depiction of Flintham Hall in the village of Flintham in Nottinghamshire, England, was from his late period, when he took to promoting the architecture and pastoral appeal of his native land. Piper, like many artists of his time, was heavily influenced by Picasso and the avant-garde, and initially painted abstractions. It was during World War II when Piper moved to figurative representation, sometimes even capturing war-torn buildings while they were on fire from night raids. Some would argue his creativity peaked during those years, though there is a lot to be said for his print illustration of Flintham and its intact structure. As if the decimation of one era did not have to overshadow the peace and architectural stability of the latter era. And what a relief to any of us to know that kind of hope and resilience exists in this world.

Below: more of Piper's buildings, including Jazeene, Charente, the archways of Holdenby, and Covehithe Church.

One of the most gorgeous and tender indie-folk songs just happened to come from the phenomenon known as OPM—or the original Philippine music scene. The recently released Oras ("Time") by band Munimuni is a gentle guitar and swirling flute-driven tune that reminds listeners of the impermanence of life. Vocalist and guitarist Adj Jiao began playing with the other four members of the band while they were attending the University of the Philippines in 2012. There they began developing a sound they called "makata pop," which they've described as a "rediscovery of the beauty of Filipino poetry" and a lyrical embrace of all the nuances in their mother tongue. Reportedly, Munimuni is a part-time project, as all members have other full-time commitments. But if Oras is any indication, the quintet is likely to gain a big following for their introspective songs and ability to remind their fellow citizens to step back every once in a while and appreciate all the beauty surrounding them.

One of the most gorgeous and tender indie-folk songs just happened to come from the phenomenon known as OPM—or the original Philippine music scene. The recently released Oras ("Time") by band Munimuni is a gentle guitar and swirling flute-driven tune that reminds listeners of the impermanence of life. Vocalist and guitarist Adj Jiao began playing with the other four members of the band while they were attending the University of the Philippines in 2012. There they began developing a sound they called "makata pop," which they've described as a "rediscovery of the beauty of Filipino poetry" and a lyrical embrace of all the nuances in their mother tongue. Reportedly, Munimuni is a part-time project, as all members have other full-time commitments. But if Oras is any indication, the quintet is likely to gain a big following for their introspective songs and ability to remind their fellow citizens to step back every once in a while and appreciate all the beauty surrounding them.

I can has gravity? A bewildered cat levitates out of the hands of Captain Druey P. Parks in this image taken 59 years ago today. The unusual scene was born out of a series of experiments NASA conducted in the '50s to learn how humans might control their bodies in microgravity. In addition to testing this out on humans, scientists hoped to pick up tips from the behaviors of cats due to their superior righting reflex. To mimic the effect of being in space, the felines rode inside a F-94C jet plane 25,000 feet above ground. When traveling at a calculated arc, the pull of gravity on the plane was counterbalanced, allowing passengers to "float" weightlessly for about half a minute. Captain Parks, who had free-floated in a previous session, "positively enjoyed" the sensation. We question whether the same could be said for his furry counterpart. Poor cats… first this, now cucumbers.